Petra pushes him back down. “It works fast,” she says, “but not that fast. You will need time to heal.”
Though he’s back on his bottom, he appeals to her. “Sidney’s heading south where I know a particularly vicious band of raiders is camping out. We need to stop her before she gets to them.”
Petra’s on her feet already, her face towards the south. “I need to go,” she says as she looks down at him again. “You need time to heal, Henry. You can’t walk yet, but I can’t carry you. I need to go.”
She nods once at him, then she’s off. He sits in the forest alone, begging the things in the silver to fix him faster. Then, not knowing what else to do but wait, he falls asleep.
Forty-One
Sidney
The lake’s even bigger than she’d thought and she’s heading further west than she’d wanted. At this rate, she won’t be going south yet for several more days.
Still, she keeps trekking. She can walk for miles before needing to rest again. From time to time, she comes across a lizard—they’re nice and fat out here.
She’s already captured and killed three of them, just in case she doesn’t come across any more as she walks. But hunger’s on the back of her mind now. All she wants to do is get to the outer limits of this darn dome, get out of here somehow, and make it to the Red Dome so she can get healed.
Still going west several minutes later, she realizes that the lake’s edges curve somewhat so there’s a portion where she needs to go north first, then west again, taking her even further off the journey than she’d like.
She finally takes a rest as she eyes the horizon and spots a shore across the way. Though she can’t quite tell from here, her best guess is that it would take her a good two hours, maybe more, to swim across to the south shore from here. She decides to walk a bit more and re-assess as she goes.
At least the goal post is closer, she tells herself. Again, words that Nayne used to say. It’s just like having her here again. She’d enjoy this journey, Sidney reckons. She’d love every part of it.
Hearing a rustle to the right, Sidney turns, expecting to see yet another fat lizard crawl out of the bushes to her right.
Instead, she sees three raiders, all with the same yellowed teeth as the one she’d seen take Petra and Henry away. They stroll up to her all grins and teeth as they eye her from her feet to her head. She steps back but can’t go any further as she feels the lake water lap gently at her shoes.
“Well look-ey ‘ere,” the biggest raider says. His face is covered in a gnarly beard much like the one Henry had had. This one’s even greasier, and though his mouth is well hidden underneath, she spots his yellow teeth just fine from here. He scratches at an angry brown spot on his neck and points at her while he addresses the other two.
“Who’da thunk we’d find a nice juicy filly all the ways out ‘ere, eh mates?” he says and the other two laugh like it’s the best joke on the planet.
Sidney moves even further back from them, her shoes now fully immersed in the water.
“Oh girlie,” the second raider says. He’s shorter than the other two, but just as covered in grime and grease. One of his eyes is shut closed from a fight, but the other sees her just fine as it glints in the late afternoon sunlight.
“Now you wouldn’t want to go into that water dere see,” he says as he points behind her. All this time, all three have been walking slowly towards her. “That water there’s dangerous, see?” he says, languishing on the ‘a’ as if that would make it even more convincing.
“Nah he’s right,” says the third raider. This one is the skinniest person she’s ever seen, which tells her he’s the hungriest. The hungriest are always the meanest, her mind says, though she doesn’t know where she’s learned that.
All she knows is, she doesn’t want to get eaten. They haven’t stopped moving forward and she’s now knee-deep in the cold waters of the lake. She’d have a harder time swimming with her shoes on but she doesn’t have time to kick them off.
The third raider says in a low deep voice, his attempt at a scary whisper. “There’s a monster in that dere lake, see,” he says as he walks up so fast, his feet are in the water too. “No one ever comes back from that dere lake.” Then he lurches forward and he splashes in the water.
But she’s already turned to dive. He grabs a handful of her bag and she’s pulled back so abruptly, she knows she doesn’t have a choice. She slips out of its straps and throws herself into the lake, diving as deep as she can possibly go, and stays down as she swims until her lungs burn from the effort, from her panicked swim away. The last thing she wants to do is surface again, but when she does, she sees that one of them is in the lake, swimming after her.
She doesn’t know why the other two haven’t but can see that this one, the shortest one, is fast too. He sluices through the water, his arms hardly making a splash as he does a front crawl, and he’s coming up close. So she dives again, deeper this time, meaning to stay under. She can turn into a mermaid, she lies to herself. It’s better to stay under, see how long she can go, it’s better to die trying to turn into a mermaid, rather than get eaten by those nasty raiders.
She dives so deep down, her ears pop and hurt. Then she looks up to see him swim past her, heading further south. She sinks deeper and sits in a lotus position at the bottom of the lake, watching him stop his swim just a few feet above. The water down here’s murky, but she can see his silhouette just fine as the sun beams down from above.
All she can hope for is, if he’s looking in the water, her form will be camouflaged in the dark of the dusky ground down here. She’s lucky her clothing is dark too. She’s lucky she can stay under the water for so long.
He stops and turns around and looks under but she knows he can’t see her. Then he yells something over at the others on the shore as he turns again.
Just swim back, she thinks, just go, as she fights the urge to take a breath. When he still doesn’t move, she decides to swim further away from him. She’ll need to take a breath sooner than later, and it’ll be better to surface somewhere he doesn’t expect, she reckons. So she swims in the opposite direction, north towards the shore, though not too close that the others can get to her. For whatever reason, they’re not in the water too, and she hopes it’s because they can’t actually swim. Nayne had said most Allendians wouldn’t, there’s no reason to.
Her lungs burn and she pushes off the ground until she gets within an inch of the surface. Then, as slowly as her lungs will allow her, as slowly as she can muster without panicking, she pops her chin up and floats to the surface, just allowing her nose and mouth to pop up. She takes a long deep breath and sinks again, hoping she did it subtly enough.
When she hears shouting though from above, and the raider leaving long foamy trails of water as he swims to where she was, she knows they saw her.
She fights to keep all the air in as she swims south again, as fast as her heavy legs can take her, heavy because of the shoes of course, so she kicks them off. Then, when her lungs burn again, she knows she has no choice, and she surfaces to continue swimming south, knowing that the raider’s right on her tail as she hears him huff and rush up behind her.
She increases her pace, not sure which direction she’s swimming any more, but knowing at least it’s far away from the shore where the other raiders are. Then she pauses when she doesn’t hear him behind her any more. She swims several more feet before slowing down. Did he give up? Did he drown? When she turns, bracing herself, he’s not in the water behind her. The shore with the raiders on it is further away than she’d thought and the two stand right at the edge, staring out at her, waiting.
She turns again, ready to finally swim where she needs to. That’s when a hand grabs her around the ankle and pulls her under.
Forty-Two
Petra
She runs through the forest for so long, she wonders for a moment if whatever is broken in her includes her inner direction gauge.
Finally, s
he slows to a stop when she reaches the end of the forest and looks out to a pristine blue lake beyond. Eyeing the ground, the remnants of some lizard bones left behind, she’s certain that Sidney’s been down this way and follows the tracks, walking around the west side of the lake.
As she hastens her pace and runs again, she analyzes the conversation she had with Henry. He seemed convinced she’d broken one of the biggest laws of Allenda simply to save Sidney from death, but if Petra’s being honest with herself as a bot should be, she knows it’s something more than that.
The girl is just a girl, she thinks, and she’s supposed to protect all Allendians, she’s supposed to protect their children.
Still, there’s more to it than even that and she knows this is far beyond her actual programming. This is something almost human. She’d always thought that was an impossibility, but she can’t fight the thought that maybe there is something human about her. After all, could she be capable of love? She’s slowed down to a walk now as she continues her analysis.
In her old roles, her position was very clear: companion, mannequin, protector, healer, teacher, and her most recent one: assassin of carriers of the flu.
She knows there were several others before her. She knows she is the last, and she knows she never would have been deployed if the others had successfully eradicated all those with the flu.
But the first thing she’d been programmed to do was take care of a family’s children. Her scans bring up the memories of that time—several years past, several years before healthy Allendians were frozen so the dome could be cleansed of the flu and all its carriers.
She’d taken care of the children as the parents had gone about their days. She’d bathed them, fed them, hugged them and told them she’d loved them as though they were her own. That was her role.
Did she love them? She’s certain she did. She remembers every freckle, every broken arm, every question they’d ever posed to her. She remembers all of it fondly. She misses them. If that’s not love, she thinks, then she’s not sure what is. For caring that deeply for them was never a part of the programming.
She stills when she hears heartbeats up ahead. Two, she thinks. Two more further away. This many in this sort of place, and based on what Henry said, she’s certain it’s raiders.
She braces herself to meet them head on—if they’ve broken any laws, it’s clear what she must do. Then she stops when she walks up to see two raiders facing out to the lake.
Another one is in the water, dragging something—someone along with him.
When she scans closer, she sees that it’s Sidney, unconscious as she floats through the water.
Then the other two raiders whoop and holler as they reach in to grab Sidney’s still form from the other raider and pull her up until she lies right on the edge of the water, her face slack.
Petra hears her heart beat. It’s faint but she’s okay. Then she analyzes the others as they celebrate their find. Their words, all guttural and rushed, remind her of the other men in the mansion when she’d stopped them.
But she doesn’t move because, so far, she’s seen no evidence of any laws being broken. Sidney lies unconscious in the sand, but it appears the man saved her from the water. What she was doing in the water in the first place, Petra’s unsure.
Then one of the raiders says, “Right here, mate? Or wait? Should we bring her to the others, or have a go first?”
“The others don’t like to share,” the shorter one says. “Reckon we have our turns first, then we’ll bring whatever’s left, yeah.”
All three laugh heartily, reminding Petra again of the others in the mansion.
Then one, a big man with a long beard turns and spies her watching them, just a few meters away.
“Waouuuuh,” he says as he pushes the shortest one. “Could we be this lucky in one day, mate?”
The others turn and stare at Petra like they’ve never seen a female form before. She analyzes them, noting that she’s seen these facial expressions many times, before. They’re what she would label: hunger, desire, lust.
When the short man looks back down at the still Sidney with the same look, Petra moves forward, her training kicking in.
Good day gentlemen,” she says as she digs into her companion-programming. “Lovely day for a swim.” She smiles her best smile yet as she waits for their response.
The big man with the dirty beard and the skinny as a rake one push each other as all three lumber up to her. Good, as long as they move away from Sidney, her plan is working.
“You,” the big lumbering man says. “You’re mine first. That’s for sure.”
“Sure,” Petra says, “as you wish of course.”
When the skinny man’s eyes land on Sidney as Petra talks, she says, “As long as you do not touch the child. As long as you let her go. I will be yours and—” She looks straight at the skinny man as she speaks. “I will also bring you to a full vault of food that will keep you more than satiated for months at a time.”
When the skinny man’s chin drops and he eyes her hungrily, she smiles again. “It is yet to be found, the vault. It has steaks and lobsters, potatoes, chocolate pudding, it has mutton, pork, chicken, you name it, the vault has it.”
The bearded man rubs his face, as if wiping away drool.
“But only—” Petra repeats. “If you do not touch the girl. Only if you let her go.”
All three men stop walking up to her. “We can’t let her go,” skinny man says as he narrows his eyes at Petra. “What if you’re lying?”
“No mate,” the short one says. “They’re not made to lie to us, these types. Are you doll?” He sneers at Petra as he walks right up to her and places a hand on her breast. “These ones here, I know these models. They were made to make all of us Allendians happy. That’s all they’re made for. We got lucky today, booyyys!”
Then he squeezes her breast and walks back up to the other men. She didn’t budge of course, when he touched her. Her companion programming requires that she adheres to their wants. She doesn’t address his words that she can’t lie—who knows where he got that rumor from? What a concept.
Still, she eyes Sidney again. “All right,” she says. “You don’t have to let her go—but you do not touch her.”
As if it’s a challenge, the big burly man steps back. “Mate, you said these ones are made to make us all happy.”
The other raider nods and looks at Petra again. “Hey, aren’t you made to make us all happy?”
“I am,” she agrees. “But I’m also made to protect Allendian children, like her.” Part of her companion programming requires that she knows how to negotiate, but they don’t need to know that part.
Understanding flashes across all three men’s eyes and they look at each other as if mentally discussing their options.
“All right,” Burly finally says. “She’s not the one we really want anyway. We’ll still keep her ‘til you bring us to this vault. Leverage, see?”
Then he picks Sidney up and throws her over his shoulder. The others eye Petra expectantly and she walks forward, meaning to take them back a ways.
It’s unfortunate that her plans with Sidney have failed, but this is what must happen now. She’ll manage to bring her back where she needs to. For now, they’ll need to travel all the way back to the city.
Forty-Three
Henry
As his chest heals, Henry closes his eyes and tries to stretch his toes, his fingers, to see if he’s getting any feeling back. So far, nothing.
Then he wonders if Petra’s fixed him at all, or if he’s destined to die here in this state, awake and aware, but still unable to get up, unable to walk again.
For the longest time, he rests and listens to the birds in the trees. Then he hears another distant sound, one that used to be part of his life for such a long time, he’d wondered if it would ever go away.
It’s the sound of raiders’ bikes, of this he’s sure. His heart trots as he understands that he’s in
the most vulnerable state he’s ever been, unable to do anything but stare in this position, and they’re getting closer. He manages to turn his head left, then right, and he knows he has some feeling back in his shoulders. From here, he can tell they’ll be near in about five minutes.
Given that he’s sat here for what’s felt like over an hour already with hardly any movement in his upper body, there’s no way he’ll be able to move at all within the next five. Still, in desperation, he throws his head to the side, willing his body to fall to the ground, begging his hands to please heal faster, his legs. Come on come on.
Still nothing.
Then his left hand twitches as a lightning bolt of pain shoots up his arm. Okay—pain. At least it’s something. Something to feel. It’s promising. The same feeling goes through his right arm and he manages to throw himself to the ground. The roars of the bikes gets closer—from the south, he realizes.
He looks up the trunk of the tree he’s been leaning on but knows there’s no way he’d be able to climb it a day from now, least of all within the next three minutes before they get to his spot. So instead he places his left palm right under his chest and, with his right hand, he pulls all one hundred pounds of Henry forward, an inch at a time, until he’s dragged himself all the way to the other side of the tree just as the first bikes reach the spot. He hears them roar past—one, two, seven bikes in total. That’s one of the largest factions of raiders he’s heard of, and he wonders why they’re heading that way when the outer dome is just a couple hours south of here.
Still, he pushes himself around to the other side again and his jaw drops as he sees Petra sitting on the back of one of the bikes, Sidney’s still form on a trailer behind her.
“What the—” he says out loud before he shuts his mouth. Though he was loud, he knows there’s no way they would have heard him from there, not with all the bikes at full speed.
Petra: Allendian Post-Apocalypse Page 13